Norton Antivirus 2004 will be released next month. For the first time, all versions of the product will require product activation, similar to the process of activating Windows XP and Office XP. (The downloadable version of Norton Antivirus 2003 required activation, but the CD release did not.)

According to this article, a Dutch magazine did an extensive test of CD-R quality. Data was burned onto thirty different CDR brands, and a shocking number of them were unreadable twenty months later.

Backups are crucial. All of us have files that are too valuable to lose if the computer won’t start tomorrow – financial data, work files, e-mail, photos, music. […] continued “LONG TERM STORAGE ON CDRs”

Lord of the Rings fans: You have a long memory, right? Think back to last year – you bought the DVD of Fellowship of the Ring right away, and then found out that the extended edition – the one you really wanted – wasn’t released until three months later. You wound up with two copies, right? […] continued “WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN”

Microsoft announced recently that Service Pack 2 for Windows XP will be delayed until next year, possibly not arriving until summer 2004. The service pack will wrap up all the Windows XP security updates into a single package that can be delivered by CD to avoid lengthy downloads.

This summer featured a high percentage of failed blockbuster movies (The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels, Gigli, and lots more), and the industry has a new theory to explain why the movies flopped. No, it’s not poor quality, lack of originality, or a general failure to entertain.

Clients with e-mail addresses @pacbell.net called me today because they weren’t receiving any mail. The online tools provided by Pac Bell to work with e-mail accounts showed no problems. Outlook could check the mailboxes. But mail addressed to those mailboxes was bouncing.

After hours of head-scratching and banging on desks and shuffling endlessly around SBC voicemail hell (and never, ever talking to a live human being), we discovered by accident that the e-mail addresses had been turned off without warning because they hadn’t been migrated to Yahoo-hosted mailboxes. […] continued “LIFE IN HELL WITH PAC BELL, SBC & YAHOO”

Yet another virus making the rounds today, and it must be really efficient at sending new copies of itself – I’ve gotten more than two dozen messages today carrying the virus, and a couple of clients reported being flooded with them as well. Here’s an article with information about the new SoBig virus, as well as the latest reports on the MSBLASTER worm and its variants. […] continued “SOBIG VIRUS”

Systems protected by a home router or firewall probably aren’t affected. I was working on a system Monday afternoon that crashed in an unusual way – and sure enough, we were on a dialup connection without a firewall. […] continued “NEW VIRUS ATTACKS WINDOWS PCs”

Wireless access points are cheap and easy to set up, creating a wireless cloud surrounding the access point for 50-70 feet in all directions. Anybody inside that cloud with a wireless-enabled notebook computer can connect to the Internet.

There’s another use of wireless technology, where a wireless signal is beamed from a transmitter to a receiver over a long distance, potentially as much as several miles. […] continued “WIRELESS EVERYWHERE”

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Bruceb Consulting is one of the leading IT consulting firms in the North Bay, providing computer consulting, network consulting, and IT support to law firms, small businesses, and individuals - onsite in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, Sebastopol), Marin County (San Rafael), and the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland), and remotely for clients all over California.

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